Google Reveals 2021's Top Search Trends

Google has released its annual summary of important search trends and topics for the year, which serves as a rather disorienting reminder of everything that has occurred in 2021 - which seem like it's only been a few months.

The Google Search Trends mini-site for 2021 offers information on all the major areas of interest, such as general searches and current events.

As seen here, the mini-site allows you to sort the listings by region, giving you a more detailed picture of what's going on in your part of the world.

The lists also give an overview of the most popular songs, sports teams, and TV shows, as well as other categories, depending on search volume.

Google has also released a month-by-month breakdown of the top searched terms, which offers a more detailed look at what happened and when.

The long Facebook outage in October drew a lot of attention - I think I had more PR proposals about 'what the Facebook outage meant for business' than any other issue in history, and they all ultimately boiled down to 'don't put all your eggs in one basket.'

Google has also released a list of notable pop culture trends and moments, which adds to the knowledge base.

There are a few major points, and it's good looking at the trends and data to get a sense of what's popular, as well as refresh your own memory on what's happened in the last year - which, again, feels like it's just yesterday.

A pandemic appears to do this by compressing time in an unusual way by making many days identical. Perhaps it's a mental response, with your brain eager to move on to the next thing, speeding up your impression of time.

In any case, a year has passed, and we're hopefully nearing the end of the post-pandemic phase.

The Google 'Year in Search' mini-site can be found here.